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It’s feature-and-price creep, but who’s complaining: The Canon 5D Mark III digital SLR comes with a 22.3 megapixel sensor, 6 frames per second shooting, and a raft of gotta-have secondary features such as automatic HDR imaging and in-camera picture rating. The full-frame body is $3,500, up $500 list over the Canon 5D Mark II (both with no lens), about $1,000 above the current street price. Some much-improved accessories are jaw-droppers: a radio-control Speedlite 600EX-RT for $630 and a wired/wireless WFT-E7A file transmitter for $850.

For the last decade, the Canon 5D Mark I, II and now III have been the pro’s backup to Canon’s main battle tank DSLRs costing $5,000-$7,000. If you own a Canon Rebel, even three grand for a camera before buying a single lens seems breathtaking. If you’re a professional shooting portraits, commercial work, or weddings, or an enthusiast looking to expand your photographic reach, the Mark III porridge is just right, neither too hot nor cold. With 6 fps shooting, it’s even a passable action camera with much improved autofocus.

Nikon fanatics will gloat because their baby, the full-frame Nikon D800, rings in at 36 megapixels and costs about the same as the Canon 5D Mark III at $3,000 street. At a plodding 4 fps, the D800 is not the camera to capture greyhound racing, though. There’s even an enhanced sharpness Nikon D800e ($3,300), without the low-pass filter. Canon is banking on most photographers not needing Nikon’s 33MB images. The camera should be an artistic tool, not a source of glee at Seagate and Western Digital every time you click the shutter.

The Canon EOS 5D Mark III is also the sum of a dozen nice little features. Press the Rate button while you’re waiting for the next pitch or for the bride to adjust the groom’s tie, and you can rate the previous photos 1-5 stars. There are dual memory cards, one CF, one SD. (Nikon may be one up on Canon here with the newest memory format, XQD, on some of its new cameras. XQD is faster and more rugged, if not yet standard.) Standard ISO goes up to 51,200, almost 10 times more than the Mark II. Canon says there’s a two f-stop improvement in low light quality. Want to take a high dynamic range (HDR) photo that stitches together three different exposures? The Mark III does it in-camera and also saves the separate images. A quiet mode won’t startle children, ministers, or judges and still allows 3 fps shooting.

Autofocusing is improved (Canon claims by 50%) with a 61-point auto-focus screen and Digic 5+ processor. Canon appears to be gearing its autofocus toward f/2.8 and some f/4 lenses favored by pros; not all AF points work with slower lenses (f/5.6, f/8) but the camera will eventually find focus. This is important: Autofocus speed is a hot button with some action shooters who abandoned Canon for Nikon five years ago; Canon has since made autofocus and low-light quality priority. Water and dust sealing is improved but you still need to be careful changing lenses outdoors and use a rain shield when it’s raining not drizzling.

Canon says it has stepped up the video capabilities; the 5D Mark II has been perhaps the most popular DSLR video camera among serious photographers. The 5D Mark III allows for two methods of SMPTE time-code embedding for ease of synchronizing multiple-camera footage and audio in post-production. Not that anyone expected it, but this is not the next generation of high-def video with 4K imaging, even if the sensor itself is capable of 5760×3840 pixels at max resolution shooting still photos. The Mark III shoots up to 1920×1080 progressive (1080p) at 30 fps.

Some features you might like aren’t there. The rear LCD is brighter but not hinged for over-the-head shooting. (Some sub-$1,000 Canons do that.) USB is 2.0 not 3.0. Canon refuses to integrate even a half-fast GPS module that would be always available if not quite as accurate, thus ignoring pros whose stock-agency shots would sell better if clients could search by location. Instead, the shoe-mount GPS Receiver GP-E2 will be available for $390 and injects not just latitude-longitude but elevation, time of day, and the compass heading. In theory, you could relocate the exact GPS coordinates of the photo (not camera) by adding in the focus distance-to-subject.

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